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As the subway rolled into Toronto's Spadina subway station, a poster caught my eye: "Historic Brunswick House is now your community drugstore."
I wondered what my grandparents would have thought about the most recent transformation of the city's legendary old saloon. I wondered what the "Brunny" would get up to next – when she was finished selling diapers, cough syrup and condoms to her neighbours on Bloor Street.
I admit to a heightened and continuing curiosity about the place. But, for the Brunswick House, I would not exist. My kids and granddaughter would be motes of dust floating in the ether.
My maternal grandparents met at the Brunswick House. She was the cook, he was the barman. The year was probably 1903 – about 30 years after the Brunswick opened its doors as a stagecoach stop back when the Annex neighbourhood was known as "the Bush."
Both had grown up in rural Ontario. He near Bond Head, she near Southampton. She had just escaped to Toronto – shoeless – from an older sister's home. She'd been sent there to tend to the farm chores. Her sister had given her a pair of boots. The situation and the sister had proven intolerable, so she ran. In good conscience, she left the boots behind.
There was a 20-year difference between the two. When they met, he was a 40-ish bachelor, she was in her late teens. You can imagine that the Brunny was a pretty rough and tumble place back then. And very British.
Over the years, the Brunswick House never lost that tough edge, as she morphed through her life stages. She was a jazz and blues club, a beer hall, a nightclub serving cheap martinis. She hosted famous musicians. She was the subject of short stories. She finally lurched into the place rowdy underage high-school kids came to get stinko. Police visited her often. Her reputation sank. She closed her doors in 2016.
A few years ago, my son and I were walking past the still-operating Brunswick House and I told him the "but for" story of his great-grandparents. Well aware of the notorious character of the place, he replied: "Mom, that is frightening." I could see his point.
Factoring in the Brunswick House, you could see ours as a rather tawdry family history, not something you necessarily want to mention in the right company. No matter what anyone tells you, colonial Toronto was always a class society, tidily stratified. And our "but for" story marked us as hailing from the lower end. My grandparents began their life together "below stairs." But, theirs is also a classic Canadian story. By dint of hard work, my grandparents pulled themselves up from poverty, with next to no education.
I have a couple of letters written to me by my grandmother. By today's standards, she would be considered illiterate. She was exceptionally proud of the fact that, during the Great Depression, she was never "on the dole," as she referred to government assistance. It meant that she took every job she could after my grandfather died, including hanging wallpaper. She never lost that strong ethical backbone she demonstrated by leaving her boots behind as a young girl setting out for the unknown barefoot. However, despite the fact that she, as a single mother, supported herself and her six children, her kids and grandchildren benefited enormously from a generous country, which provided universal education and health care to allow them to move into middle-class lives.
Through her many lives, the Brunswick House came to reflect the complexity of the city. When my son and I passed by and I told him our family's connection to the place, we also read a sign posted in the window outlining the dress code: "No Do-Rags or Bandannas, No Sweats or Tracksuits of Any Kind, No Tanks or Cutoffs, No Camo Gear, No Attitude."
That sign would have been incomprehensible to my grandparents. Camo? Do-Rags? Cutoffs? Attitude? Today's city would be overwhelming for them. When Frank Dunham and Kate Hendry arrived in the city, firmly in the servant class, they probably assumed they'd never move from that position. And yet, their descendants have been fortunate, capable of manoeuvring through the layers of the city and given opportunities beyond anything my grandparents could have imagined.
I wonder how and where the updated version of my grandparents' story is playing out now in Toronto. How are new arrivals to the city faring? They've landed in a rough and tumble and very expensive city. Looking for work, meeting others, settling down, having children, building new lives: What does their Brunswick House look like? Will their families have the same chances ours did? Will Canada continue to offer a generous and universal hand up to all? Author Zadie Smith wrote that Britain is "a nation divided by postcodes, and accents, schools and last names." Has that become an apt description of Canada as well?
I wonder whether all those who have backgrounds like mine – and there are plenty of us – will reflect upon the benefits they and their forebears received to allow them to succeed in our society. Or will our personal histories be forgotten in the rush to open shiny new stores and will we, too, become a nation divided? I wonder.
Susan Lightstone lives in Toronto.